Reckless (46 page)

‘But a nuclear war!’ repeated Susie. ‘I mean, that means everyone gets killed.’

‘It does rather.’

‘And you think this might happen before my wedding?’

Pamela burst into laughter.

‘I think you should tell Eugene,’ she said to Stephen. ‘Urgent message to Khrushchev. Delay end of world to after Susie’s wedding.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Susie. ‘I suppose you think I’m so silly. But it would be so jolly unfair.’

Stephen stayed with them long enough to down a double espresso. Then he got up, gave Susie a mock bow, and said to Pamela,

‘If you’re around at Sunday lunchtime – if, that is, the world hasn’t ended – Bill’s asked us to lunch. Do join us.’

‘I don’t know, Stephen.’

‘Just give me a tinkle. I could swing by and pick you up.’ After he was gone Susie said, ‘So who’s Bill?’

‘Just a friend of Stephen’s.’

‘You seem to have got some pretty rum friends, Pammy.’

‘They’re not really friends. You know how people appear in your life and then disappear again.’

‘That’s what so reassuring about Logan,’ said Susie. ‘I’ve known him for ever. He says he used to pull my pigtails, which is nonsense, because I never had pigtails. Just imagine, when I was seven he was twice my age!’

In Moscow, Khrushchev was maintaining his hard line in public. Privately, as Friday wore on, he began to be afraid that he had misjudged Kennedy. Might the still-inexperienced young president be so foolish as to risk war over Cuba after all?

This was the puzzle that kept Khrushchev awake at night. What was Kennedy thinking? Both Andrei Gromyko at the Foreign Ministry and Oleg Troyanovsky, his foreign affairs adviser, told him that Kennedy would never countenance a nuclear war.

‘How do you know this?’ said Khrushchev. ‘Kennedy is a weak man. Weak men are dangerous.’

‘All the assessments from our embassy in Washington reach this conclusion.’

‘What do they know? They hear the official line. Of course Kennedy
says
he doesn’t want nuclear war. Don’t tell me what he
says
. Tell me what he’s thinking.’

‘How are we to know that, Nikita Sergeyevich?’

‘That is what our intelligence services are for! No political leader reveals his true intentions in public. So we listen to the whispers and the murmurs, we look for the unguarded moments. A word spoken between friends is worth a year of public speeches.’

Khrushchev believed this because it was true of himself. At the same time he was aware that in moments of excitement or anger he could let his tongue slip. Secretly he regarded this as one of his most skilful strategies: the accidental outburst that could be excused later as a lapse in the heat of the moment, but which nevertheless conveyed a message.

In this spirit he arranged to meet an American businessman who was in Moscow to promote a deal. William E. Knox, president of Westinghouse International, found himself summoned to the Kremlin for a three-hour rant from Khrushchev. The Soviet leader defended his aid to Cuba, insisted on his desire for peace, and concluded with a threat.

‘If the United States insists on war,’ he said, ‘we’ll all meet in hell!’

Afterwards Troyanovsky asked Khrushchev why he had taken the trouble to say this to a businessman, who was no part of the American government.

‘If I tell Dobrynin to say it,’ replied Khrushchev, ‘they won’t believe it. When they hear it from an electrical goods salesman, they’ll believe it.’

*

Later that day GRU headquarters in Moscow received an interesting report from a new back channel. A junior attaché at the London embassy had apparently succeeded in opening up a direct line to the British prime minister. His report was sent on to KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square in a purple folder. During the crisis all information received from abroad was coordinated by a special task force in the Lubyanka, reduced to manageable proportions and passed on to the chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Semichastny. The task force was encouraged to give priority to information not knowingly given.

In this light Captain 2nd Class Ivanov’s proposal looked both promising and distinctly odd. Why were the chief of Britain’s
defence staff and the British prime minister in contact with such a junior official at all?

‘Who is this Ivanov? Is he one of ours?’

Ivanov was GRU, Army Intelligence, not KGB. The task force was exclusively KGB.

‘Surely the British are using him,’ they said to each other. ‘They may even have turned him already. He’s either a dupe or a double agent.’

‘This peace summit he proposes. This is London looking for a way to trick us into backing down.’

To give themselves political cover, the KGB passed the file to Oleg Troyanovsky in the chairman’s office. Troyanovsky glanced at it, saw that it related to the British, not the Americans, and put it aside to read later.

Among the folders sent up by the KGB directly to Khrushchev’s desk was one that gave prominence to two alarming reports. The first had come through KGB sources in Washington. A barman at the National Press Club called Johnny Prokov was serving drinks in the Tap Room when he overheard two
Herald Tribune
journalists. One of them, Warren Rogers, was telling the other, Robert Donovan, that he was due to fly south that same night, to cover the operation to capture Cuba. Prokov passed on this information to Anatoly Gorsky, TASS correspondent and KGB agent. The KGB team in Washington sent a second secretary from the embassy to hang around the parking lot behind the Willard Hotel, where Rogers kept his car. When Rogers showed up in the morning, the Russian fell into a ‘chance’ conversation with him, and asked if Kennedy was serious about attacking Cuba. Warren Rogers had no knowledge whatsoever of Kennedy’s intentions, but he took it as his patriotic duty to assure the Russian that the American president was not a man who could be pushed around.

‘He sure as hell is serious about Cuba,’ said Rogers.

The report was transmitted to Moscow at once. At the same time the GRU office in the Washington Embassy, part of whose job was to track Pentagon radio signals, picked up an order from the joint chiefs of staff putting Strategic Air Command on DEFCON 2, an alert one stage short of war. A second intercepted signal ordered US hospitals to prepare to receive casualties.

This was the kind of information Khrushchev found convincing. None of it was meant for the ears of Moscow. Kennedy really was going to invade.

Khrushchev called Troyanovsky into his private office.

‘Find me a speech of Lenin’s that supports a tactical withdrawal.’

Then he summoned the members of the Presidium to the Kremlin. To their astonishment he announced a complete reversal of his tactics.

‘The missiles have served their purpose,’ he said. ‘They have forced the Americans to accept that Socialist Cuba is a fact of life, and that the Soviet Union, as leader of the Socialist world, is committed to Cuba’s defence. The time has now come to offer to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a cast-iron pledge from the Americans not to invade Cuba.’

The Presidium heard this in silence. They had not spoken up when Khrushchev had made the decision to send nuclear missiles to Cuba, and they did not speak up now. These were all men who had come of age politically under Stalin. They had looked on as colleagues had challenged the leader, and been charged with disloyalty. They had written on the guilty verdicts the one word,
da
: yes. They had signed their names. The guilty ones had then been shot. Such memories create the habit of absolute unquestioning obedience.

‘Cuba will become a zone of peace,’ said Khrushchev. ‘These are correct and reasonable tactics. Lenin himself said, “To accept
battle at a time when it is obviously advantageous to the enemy and not to us is a crime.”’

The Presidium voted unanimously to approve the new plan.

As more and more evidence poured in of American preparations to invade, Khrushchev brushed aside Gromyko, who was preparing a formal letter to President Kennedy, and began to dictate a letter of his own. Pacing up and down his office, striking the air with his hands, he hectored and pleaded, accused and flattered, and Troyanovsky wrote it all down.

‘What would war give you?’ he dictated. ‘You are threatening us with war. But you will know that the very least which you would receive in reply would be that you would experience the same consequences as – as – as – those which you sent us.’

He stabbed a finger at Troyanovsky.

‘You have that?’

‘Yes, Nikita Sergeyevich.’

‘It must all be very simple. Strong, but simple.’

He resumed pacing and dictating.

‘I have participated in two wars, and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. I don’t know whether you can understand me and believe me, but I should like to have you believe in yourself and to agree that one cannot give way to passions. It is necessary to control them.’

He now spoke to Gromyko, who was listening in silence.

‘There, you see. I address him as leader to leader. As man to man.’

He continued.

‘Let us therefore show statesmanlike wisdom. I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba will not carry any kind of armaments. You would declare that the United States will not invade Cuba. Then the necessity for the presence of our military specialists in Cuba would disappear.’

He stared at Gromyko. Gromyko nodded in silence.

‘Mr President,’ Khrushchev resumed, ‘we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war. The more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it.’

He jerked his hands in the air, acting out the tightening of a knot.

‘That’s very clear, I think,’ he said.

‘The knot of war,’ said Troyanovsky. ‘A vivid image.’

‘Consequently,’ said Khrushchev, dictating again, pleased with his words, ‘if there is no intention to tighten that knot and thereby to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot.’

His hands moved in the air, untying the invisible knot.

Later that night, back at his own desk, Troyanovsky picked up the purple folder from the KGB. He was tired, and did not read it attentively, but it was clear to him that the KGB did not take this Ivanov seriously, and that whatever he was proposing was no longer of any immediate relevance. He wrote on it:
Not urgent. Apply standard procedures
. Then he added it to the pile of documents awaiting transfer to the archives.

*

Khrushchev’s letter, translated, ciphered, cabled, and deciphered, reached Washington late on Friday evening. The president read it through once, and found himself unsure exactly what he’d read.

‘Is he offering to take the missiles out of Cuba or not?’

He postponed any response until the following morning.

Over at the Pentagon, General Curtis LeMay also read Khrushchev’s letter.

‘What a lot of bullshit,’ he declared. ‘He must think we’re a bunch of dumb shits if we swallow that syrup.’

Pamela had been more unsettled by Susie’s prattle than she cared to admit. On the one hand she pitied her friend for the narrowness of the life she was choosing. To be married, at nineteen, to a braying fool who worked in the City. To think of sex as a treat for the boys. To choose to dress like her own mother. But at the same time, she envied her. Susie was moving on to the next stage of life, as ordained by her tribe. Marriage wouldn’t bring happiness, but it would give her a place in the world, a function, a status. What else could a girl do but marry?

Let the world end, Pamela thought. What is there in the future to wait for?

Hugo had a business dinner that evening, so Pamela ate simply and alone. Tomorrow, Saturday, Harriet and Emily were due to return.

Quite suddenly, sitting by herself at the kitchen table, Pamela fell into a state of despair. It happened without cause, without warning. She had made herself some toasted cheese, and had cut it up, a little over-obsessively, into tidy rectangles. She was just lifting one rectangle on her fork, it was midway between the plate and her mouth, when her hand froze.

Why eat? We’re all about to die.

The ground fell away beneath her, and she saw that she was resting over a dark void. The slightest movement could topple her into this void, and once falling, she knew she would fall for ever. Terror caused her muscles to tense and her heart to beat rapidly. The darkness came pressing in from all sides. She opened her mouth to cry out, but no sound came.

There’s nothing after all, she said to herself. There’s nothing.

It wasn’t terror at death. To die you must first live. What Pamela felt was the horrified conviction of non-existence.

I am nothing. No past, no future. No meaning, no value. Only empty dark infinite space.

She fled from the kitchen, leaving her modest supper half eaten. She wanted to crawl deep into a hole, to close her eyes, to be safe. She went through her night-time ritual of undressing and washing, clinging to every familiar habit as if it would hold back the darkness; and little by little the terror abated. She had stopped trembling by the time she was curled up in bed. But she could not sleep.

What had happened? Was it Susie‘s engagement? Was it Eugene’s warning that the Russian bear would wake? Or was it the unhappiness she had inherited from her father?

It was in him from the beginning
.

Strange images passed through her mind. She saw herself standing naked on stage, and silent men staring at her. One of them was Stephen Ward, with his
pinga grande
. She was playing Ghosts in the night woods, and there were men in the trees, staring at her. The men were naked, and aroused. She saw Mary watching her, and didn’t want Mary to look, shouted at her to look away. None of this felt like dreams. It was a parade of memories, with which she was helplessly tormenting herself.